History Class
by Apollonia
Summary: How do you teach a class of free teenagers about the war crimes which made them free? Nearly 60 years after the fall of Snow and the Capitol, a teacher tries.


History Class

Friday afternoon was the worst this year. Her Sophomore class was boisterous at the best of times, and few of them enjoyed History enough to be able to concentrate during the last period of the week.

Every week they sauntered, shuffled and bounced into Leontine's classroom and every week she would be forced to use the first precious slice of time corralling them and forcing the topic away from weekend plans.

She loved them for their devil-may-care attitudes. The freedom to be self-absorbed and over-dramatic was more precious than they would ever know. Teachers didn't generally enjoy their students' ignorance but on that matter she was more than content.

Most of the curriculum was formulated by central government in the Capitol and although there was some room for manoeuvre and district-specific modules, some things were absolutely required.

The Massacre of the Innocents was required study for Sophomores the country over, starting in Week Six of Spring semester. Leontine had been a teacher for more than twenty years in four different districts and had yet to find a tougher teaching assignment than the Massacre. Without fail, every year her students reacted to the essay assignment with the same set of responses. It didn't help that she still found it tough to deal with herself.

'Everyone, shut up!' she bellowed. The class fell silent. Miss Leontine was never like this with them. Her students loved Miss Leontine for her refusal to use her surname with them, for her kindness, patience and deep faith in _them_. 'Your homework assignment-'

Groans. Why was Miss Leontine giving them the homework assignment before the class had even begun?

'Your homework assignment!' she repeated. 'Is as follows: "The Massacre of the Innocents was a necessary act to bring the war to a swift end and save more lives. Discuss.'

A moment's silence. Then loud, concerned chatter.

She let them talk amongst themselves for a minute or two. It was one of the first truly difficult tasks handed to them, the first time they'd be required to use the historical analysis skills she'd been teaching them for a year and a half. They were unsettled and nervous. Leontine was a History teacher and knew that every so often something so utterly heinous occurs that the scars they leave are written deep into the DNA of those who survive and passed on to each subsequent generation.

One of the kids put his hand up, brows furrowed.

'Yes, Peeta?'

Another Peeta. In her first year of teaching she had twelve Peetas, nine Katnisses and four Finnicks. When she moved to District Four, that reversed to fourteen Finnicks, eleven Katnisses and eight Peetas. Times had changed though, and the people no longer felt the need to honour the old heroes as they once did. In District Two she had three Gales in one class for a year and she had to call them by the surnames. This year she has two Peetas, a junior and this sophomore. Her last Katniss graduated last year, but there's a Gale in the freshman class and a young man called Everdeen in her homeroom.

'How... how long should it be, Miss Leontine?'

'It's up to you, but anything less than two pages isn't enough.' She clears her throat and begins to spiel she's developed over the years. 'If you're looking for simple, easy answers, you won't find them. So, once we're done with class – and we'll do more on Tuesday - read the chapters in your textbooks. Read the suggested primary texts. Read. _Read_ as much as you can from all sides. That's the only hope any of us can have to grasp what happened that day.'

Silence, just like every year. The rest of the period moved quickly, the kids caught up in the facts as they covered the Massacre of the Innocents, like how it was General Hawthorne himself who named it such, how the Mockingjay went mad that night, how it brought Panem's oppressors to their knees at last... It was the first time that the students groaned when the bell rang at the _end_ of the lesson.

Leontine took her time getting home that evening. The air was crisp, the sky clear, so she walked home. District 12 was lovely in the spring. She stopped in town to pick up groceries and ran into some of her sophomores there, gathered by the fountain as was their custom.

A cheerful voice called out to her: 'Good evening, Miss Leontine!'

She smiled and waved at them. 'I thought you'd be sick of the sight of me, Peeta.'

'Yeah- I mean, no! We were just saying how great class was today. But I don't... I'm not looking forward to the assignment.' He went red and Shiloh gave him a teasing shove.

She spoke: 'Don't listen to him, Miss Leontine. I didn't know history could be well, interesting. Sorry.'

Leontine's smile is understanding. She didn't like it much when she was at school, but things were very different then. 'I look forward to reading your essays. But for now I have only one instruction: enjoy your evenings. I'll see you all on Monday.'

She dawdled home along the road towards the Meadow. The yellow bushes in her front garden gave the appearance of glowing in the dying spring sunlight. Inside she heated the night before's leftover stew and passed the night watching television and marking the latest freshman papers.

The following Friday brought twenty-three of twenty-six papers to her. Two of the incompletes are understandable: Silvie has been home sick since Tuesday, Laurel broke his foot in gym class the day before. Peeta has no paper and no ready excuse.

'I tried, Miss Leontine.' He blushed furiously red. 'I couldn't find the words.'

Leontine could see how hard he was trying to keep his composure. She had at least one student every year who just _couldn't_ do it and she always knew who it would be: the sensitive, empathetic kids who struggled with the notion that human beings could wreak such havoc on each other.

'We'll speak after class, Peeta. For now, I'd like you to get in groups. I'll come around and give each group a cause to discuss and then present to the class...'

The class works diligently throughout. Their presentations are thoughtful, by and large. A couple of kids worry her with their complete lack of empathy but that's the same as every year too.

The bell rings, another week done. Peeta hovers near her desk until the others are gone. She waits for him to speak. It feels mean but she knows from experience it's kinder in the long run.

'Miss Leontine, I...' Peeta sniffles. 'I haven't been able to sleep for days... I can't think of anything else. I knew what the Massacre was before, of course but I didn't _feel_ what it was and now...'

She hands him a tissue. 'I know how you feel. Really I do. I have to teach it every year and it never gets easier. I promise you that. But you have got to write an essay. Write how you feel, however long it is or however you write. Just _do_. All you can do – all any of us can do – is face it full-on.'

He gives her a nod and leaves. She repeats the routine of the previous Friday but its raining and the students aren't outside. She makes herself some sandwiches and coffee and faces the Massacre full-on herself by grading their papers.

She has a box of tissues at hand like every year. Shiloh's is the first to bring on the tears. She is a sweet girl trying hard to see all the possible viewpoints. Tommy's paper is sixteen pages long and at least six pages longer than it needs to be, but he finds refuge in words so she's not surprised. Edd's paper is the minimum length and he said all he needed to say in the first paragraph. He's one of the black-and-white kids who wouldn't know empathy if it hit him in the face.

She works all night because she can't stop with this assignment. Her coffeepot works harder than at any other time of the year. She is still awake when there is a knock on her door just after eight o'clock on Saturday morning. It is Peeta, as exhausted as her. He hands her his essay and walks away again without a word.

Well, she didn't _need_ to sleep...

_The Massacre of the Innocents was a necessary act to bring the war to a swift end and save more lives. Discuss._

_We take it for granted now that the Articles of Government for Panem decree all human beings are of equal value and worth. We forget that not all that long ago it wasn't so._

_We forget that children were required to kill as entertainment within living memory. We forget that there were Citizens and there were the Districts. It's easy to forget when it isn't your own experience._

_How can I say if killing hundreds of children and medical workers was necessary? How can I say that those lives were worth more or less than the lives not lost? Nothing in the records can prepare an answer to that question which is truly honest. I know what I'd like to say, but I don't know. I don't even know how I'd feel if I was Reaped. Scared, I guess, but I don't know. I wouldn't like to kill, but would I?_

_The value of human lives changes, but the only universal truth is that it's never valued highly enough by anyone._

_I don't know whether General Hawthorne was right. I can tell from the primary sources that he regretted it but not enough to _not do it_. I know that the bomb-maker killed himself five years later but the sources tell me there are plenty of other reasons why he might've done that. General Hawthorne was really young and had seen his district blown to pieces by the people who'd been oppressing it for his entire life. On the other hand, surely some things are always wrong? I wasn't there and I don't know what it felt like._

_I don't even know if it did save lives. Squad 451 were down but not out. Without the Massacre, the Mockingjay wouldn't have been distracted by the brutal death of her sister, so perhaps she would've made it into the palace. Who knows what that alternate reality would've looked like? I might as well ask 'what if Panem never existed?'_

_I know that we don't value human life as highly as we should. None of us do, until it's too late and all that's left are regrets, pain and hate._

_Some things are always wrong and responding with the same only guarantees more of the same. Someone has to be the one to say 'no more'. It seems to me that General Hawthorne did all of that. He gave it the title 'Massacre of the Innocents' and he hosted the Reparations Board. Doing that, he likely prevented even more bloodshed, but a good turn can't undo a terrible one._

_The world is a complicated place and we don't value human life as highly as we should. Fifty-eight years have passed since that night and it still matters because we still don't value human life as highly as we should. Until we do, it doesn't matter because lives are still being ended before their right time._

Leontine smiled. The kids who found the assignment toughest were usually the ones who came up with the most interesting sentiments. It wasn't long enough but she let that pass. She took a copy of Peeta's paper and sent it via the instant electronic Panemail service to the Head of Education in the Capitol, then took herself to bed.

A response was waiting for her six hours later when she awoke.

_Thanks Leo. It'll be in the running for Best Response. See you in the C soon?_

Given that he was a writer as well as the ultimate education authority in Panem, her younger brother's correspondence was always brief.

Peeta's essay came third in the entire country and earned him a trip to the Capitol Hall of the Past. They moved on, as her classes always did. They all found their own ways to deal with the scars of the past. Teenagers were hardy and self-absorbed creatures, but Leontine's Sophomore History class was never quite so distracted again.

The anniversary of the Massacre now looms large. Sixty years is a long time. Peeta's return from the Capitol brought the subject back this one Friday afternoon.

'Miss Leontine?' Silvie had become entranced by history once she'd convinced herself it was OK to like learning. 'Did you ever have to write about the Massacre when you were at school?'

'I studied it at high school, and again in college. And every year with classes like you.'

'What's your answer?'

Leontine takes a deep breath. Her classes didn't always think to ask. Her answer was not automatic. 'We cannot control when someone else chooses to inflict something hateful on us. We can only choose our response.'

'That's not an answer to the question,' Basil replies. His was one of the less empathetic papers. 'What do you think?'

'What do you feel?' Peeta adds.

Leontine sits on the edge of her desk at the front of the room.

'I think the question is wrong. It treats the Massacre of the Innocents as if it happened in isolation. It didn't. I'm a history teacher, right? I know that in every war there are atrocities on all sides. We did pre-Panem history last year, so you should remember some of the examples. We cannot change the past but we can learn from it. Power never gives up without a bitter fight, you can learn that from history. Killing one rebel recruits two more, you can learn that from history.'

'You're still not answering the question, Miss Leontine,' Shiloh says.

'No.' She smiles. 'I'm not. You see, the point of this paper wasn't to find _the answer_. A single answer doesn't exist. There are as many answers as there are people answering... and my own answer has changed over the years. I once believed there was no excuse for it. None. That it was a war crime and that everyone involved should've been executed. Then I grew older and began to see that nothing is _ever_ that simple.'

Peeta won't let it pass, even looks wounded: 'But some things are always wrong.'

Leontine nods her agreement. 'Yes, they are. It doesn't follow that they are also simple.'

The bell rings and the students leave. Leontine hasn't time to tarry: she has a hover shuttle to catch if she's to get to the Capitol in time.

The shuttle is delayed more than two hours due to bad weather over District 3. By the time she's thanking the doorman for helping with her bag, Leontine wants nothing more than a long, hot, flowery soak in the deep bathtub, and finds Trixie has one ready, waiting and steaming.

'Thank you,' she says most gratefully. Trixie nods, never one to say much. Leontine has never been accustomed to having staff and still doesn't feel comfortable with it. She wallows for almost an hour, until the lavender has relaxed her muscles and soothed her nerves.

Her brother is eating dinner but stops to hug her tightly, the smell of garlic on his breath as he does. 'I've missed you!'

'You reek, child!'

Craig smiles. 'Sorry. Got a bit of a cold, and I'm told garlic is good for that. We're on a getting-back-to-nature kick, you know.'

'I noticed you've got rid of some gadgetry.'

'Indalia's idea. Back to nature and what it can do for us, including medicines.'

'Where's she?'

'Already eaten, back at work. What you get for marrying a doctor.' He rolls his eyes and goes back to his generously portioned dinner. 'How was your journey?'

'Horrendo. Sat next to a squirmy toddler most of the way. Busy. Felt like it took forever.' She serves herself a decent helping of everything and begins to plough through the rich flavours. Even now it seems Capitol people get the best, but they have the money. Or maybe it's just that her _brother_ has money compared to her. The difference between being a teacher and being 'in education', she supposes.

Also, Craig always more willing and able to take advantage.

'Have you seen him recently?' she asks.

'No.' He shakes his head. 'He went back to 2.'

'Why didn't you tell me-'

'Weird as this might sound, I wanted to see my sister! Don't worry, I've got a private craft to take you there tomorrow afternoon.'

'I'm sorry.' She is, too. She knows he misses her, misses home and everything since becoming such a Notable Figure. 'Are you coming too?'

He shakes his head and Leontine is not surprised. 'I'm coming to 12 soon. End of year inspection.'

'Are you allowed to tell me that? Shouldn't it be a surprise for the schools?'

'You're OK. I don't actually do any inspecting. It's all show.'

'Wait a minute, at the end of the year?'

He nods. Leontine understands now. It is all show, after all. It is all anniversaries and cameras and _show_.

'We can go see them together,' she suggests, thinking of a sunny spot near a lake, beyond where the fence used to be.

'We will.'

Dinner passes with fond conversation about the past and the future, his family and her students. She spends the next morning with her niece and nephew before Craig takes her to the hoverstation. As promised, it's a smaller, private vehicle and she luxuriates in the comfortable seats and complimentary snacks until the mountains of 2 hove into view.

Leontine has never liked District 2. It is too bare and bleak for her tastes, though they've been prettying it up over the years. A driver is waiting to take her out to the house on the hill, a journey which always takes longer than she expects and is always over too quickly.

Sooner than she'd like, she is being shown through the immaculate hallways of the house by Dem, his housekeeper this many years and then, too quickly, she is sat by the bedside of frail, elderly Gale Hawthorne, the General of the Armies of Panem, Rebel Saint of Twelve, The Reconstructor and Butcher of the Innocents. In more than 80 years he's been many things to many people. Mostly these days everyone loves him. Mostly.

Craig sees things in black-and-white and hasn't been easy around Gale since learning all about the Massacre. It was harder for him, she supposed, having looked up to and idolised Gale as he had. Leontine had never been completely comfortable with the General, had seen the darkness and shadows behind his smile.

Yet, she is the one who is here. The only one, it would appear.

'Hello, Leo.' Gale is in his eighties but has only begun to wither in the last year or so. It is hard to see the strapping, powerful man of her childhood brought to this, wrapped in thick blankets, tiny in the bed. His smile is weak and his eyes watery. 'It's nice to see you.'

'I thought I was going to see you in the city.'

'I came back here. I should die here.'

'Die?' she scoffs. 'You're not dying.'

'Oh, I am. But I should die here. This is where the atrocities began.'

'If you're going down that route, you should die in Thirteen where you planned them,' she snaps and regrets it immediately. She has always despised his self-pitying moments and has never found a way to stay silent. She always regrets her responses., even when she was a furious teenager raging against him.

'Good point, well made.'

'Did you hear one of my students came in third on the Best Response?'

'Dem told me. Well done.'

'It was all Peeta's own work.' She uses his name on purpose, but Gale doesn't react. There have been too many Peetas. 'He'll go far, I hope. Did you read it?'

Shake of the head. 'Dem says I get too upset. She doesn't let me have them anymore.'

Leontine has never quite managed to rouse "pity" for the General but now she does, that he lives such a lonely existence, only his housekeeper for company. His wife's death twenty years earlier started a chain reaction which was never brought under control and now his children barely even send notes via Panemail. Yes, Leontine pities Gale at last.

'I didn't do enough,' he coughs. 'There's still so much to do-'

'Yes, and we'll do it.'

'I have to leave things better than they were when I started, otherwise what's the point?' He tries to sit up but it just causes more coughing.

'Shush now.'

Dem bustles in and glares at Leontine for getting him agitated. 'Are you staying long?'

'I don't know, Dem. I can-'

'She has a job to do,' Gale interrupts. 'But she'll stay til Sunday night.'

Once a General, always a General. She used to hate his habit of giving orders, but has long since realised he knows no other way, and hasn't since long before he had any official rank. Obey or die is a simple rule and he's lived by it too long to know different.

'I'll make up a room,' Dem scowls at Gale, not Leontine.

'Thank you, Dem,' she says politely. Back to him. 'The anniversary-'

'I have to be there. I have to-' he manages to sit up this time. 'I have to be there and make my apology and-'

'How many more times are you going to apologise? Isn't fifty-nine enough?'

'It is never enough! I am a murderer and I must make amends.'

'You've been making amends for fifty-nine years! You don't get it, do you? You can't make amends for something which can't be undone! You can't bring those children back. You can't bring _her_ back and you've spent nearly sixty years trying to. Which is great! Better than nothing. You've practically rebuilt the country single-handed. Panem is Panem because of you, but there is no use killing yourself for it!'

Oh, the silence. She understands once more. Beetee killed himself cleanly, quickly. Gale has been doing it much more slowly, but more constructively. He really has helped Panem, truly has. She knows of three separate coup d'etats he's prevented almost bloodlessly. She knows that at times, Panem has teetered on the brink of fascism again and he saved it, without anyone knowing. She only knows because of her insider information.

'I want to come to Twelve,' Gale says. 'In the summertime. If I can.'

He stayed away from Twelve. Nobody minded: they could rebuild by themselves. He might've saved them once, but none of them wanted that reminder.

'If you're up to it, General.'

'Don't call me that.'

'What should I call you?'

'Uncle Gale.'

'No.' She has not been able to call him Uncle Gale since she learned about the Massacre. She could be kind and allow it, but it hurts too much. 'Please don't ask me that again.'

'All right.' All his age and weariness and worries and guilt settle into his face and he looks even older than he did earlier, which seems impossible. 'I'm sorry.'

'That's an apology I can accept.' She takes his hand gently in her own. It is all bones and papery skin. 'You need... It's been such a long time.'

'Some things are always wrong and will always stay wrong. I knew that at the time, you know. I knew what I was doing. Not about _her_, but I knew. I was so... black-and-white.'

She hates that he is using the same terms of phrase she herself uses, but listens anyway.

'Do _you_ think you saved more lives than you destroyed?' she asks.

Gale's eyes close. 'I know I did.'

'So-'

'Some things are always wrong. I still have to make my amends, Leo. To _her_. To you, to everyone. That's what my life has been since then. It was the deal I made myself, to commit an act so vile I had to give up myself to fixing it. I'll be back in the Capitol soon. We've got work to do.'

Leontine knows to argue would be pointless. He is as black-and-white as ever he was, a fundamentalist to the core. She can only be grateful that he's turned this single-mindedness to positive uses. He will kill himself in the effort of making the world a better place, and part of her thinks that's the very least he can do.

'I'll leave you Peeta's essay,' she tells him. 'I think you might want to read it.'

General Gale Hawthorne died in his sleep three weeks before the sixtieth anniversary of the Massacre of the Innocents. He was alone but for his housekeeper. An essay about the Massacre was found in his lap and he had made notes in the margins.

Leontine Mellark accompanied his body back to the Capitol where he was buried according to his wishes, in the mass grave of the Innocents.


End file.
